At the start of the 2016/17 NHL season there was a lot of talk about rookies coming into this season.

And why wouldn’t there be? Auston Matthews is one of the most exciting players to arrive in Toronto in recent years, Patrik Laine has a lethal shot and is too young to drink in the US and each team has a whole host of rookies looking to break into the big league.

One of those players looking to break into the NHL was former London Knight Mitch Marner.

This is the part where I’d usually point and laugh and say “you were all wrong” but to be honest, I was just as wrong as most about this 5’11″/ 160 lbs forward.

The Winnipeg Jets and RFA defenceman Jacob Trouba finally reached a deal today, with Trouba signing a 2-year/$6 million contract to stay with the Jets.

Time was running out for Trouba this season, if he reached December 1st without a contract he wouldn’t be eligible to play for the rest of the 2016/17 season.

Back in May, Trouba requested a trade out of Winnipeg because he wanted top four minutes as a right-handed defenceman, something that most teams would definitely like to acquire. Within the Jets organisation, Trouba is lower on the pecking order than he would be at most other clubs, he’s got to compete with the big bodies of Dustin Byfuglien and Tyler Myers.

I should probably start by saying that this blog post is partly driven by me wanting to include the images I took of the event I’m going to talk about because I’m proud of them and want to shove them in your face for no reason other than, because I can.

Now that’s out of the way, Great Britain played Norway in Ice Hockey twice this week, they didn’t win but that’s cool. It’s Norway, they’ve qualified for the last two Olympic games and have qualified for the 2018 games in Pyeongchang, Korea.

FUN FACT: Great Britain have one more Olympic gold medal in Ice Hockey than Norway (1936 Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen)

It’s almost a month since the 2016/17 NHL season got underway and it’s definitely been an exciting start, decisions are coming for NHL GM’s as they have to decide if they’re going to burn a year of some of this year’s rookie’s entry level deals or send them back down to junior.

One of the players who before the season began I thought I’d be writing about being on the cusp of staying in the league or going back down to the OHL, Mitch Marner is not going to be spoken about in this article past this paragraph (he probably will, I’m a hypocrite). Marner has been on fire for the Toronto Maple Leafs and he has nothing to worry about and will be with the Leafs all the way to the end of the season.

In the latest edition of Across The Pond I revisit a topic I spoke about last month where I predicted that both the Edmonton Oilers and Toronto Maple Leafs would both improve this season but only slightly.

Tonight the 2015 NHL Draft first overall pick Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers take on the 2016 NHL Draft first overall pick Auston Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs face off for the first of two meetings between the sides this season.

Both teams have vastly different experiences early in the 2016-17 season, watch below as I talk about tonight’s meeting at the season ahead.

I hope you enjoyed this latest video, more written content is coming (once this goes up I will be starting a new article).